Curt Doolittle

Theme: Civilization

  • A HISTORY OF “YOU” “Using a plural to address a single person was once reserved

    A HISTORY OF “YOU”

    “Using a plural to address a single person was once reserved for the very highborn, but made its way down the social ladder until any social superior was to be addressed with you. It didn’t stop there, though, as vous and Sie did. Instead, having once crowded out ye, you now edged out thou in the early modern period.

    To recap: you began as as objective, then became usable in subject position too. Then it went from plural only to singular too. Then it went from formal use to informal use too. Ye, thou and thee (the objective form of thou) were all left behind in the history books. Quite the conquering pronoun. Good job, you.”

    (From The Economist)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-20 11:10:00 UTC

  • ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM : WESTERN PHILOSOPHY : INCOMPATIBILITY What is wrong

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM : WESTERN PHILOSOPHY : INCOMPATIBILITY

    What is wrong with conservatives who adhere to the Aristocratic Egalitarian ethic? It’s premise is that you earn your rights, you are not born with them.

    You can’t enfranchise everyone by birth, as if they were possessed of original sin.

    You can’t enfranchise everyone into aristocracy if aristocratic values are learned.

    You can’t enfranchise everyone into into an aristocratic model of society if they have no desire, and not biological incentive to be aristocratic.

    The aristocratic egalitarian model is a strategy for a superior minority to defend itself from the communalism of an inferior minority. It is the only successful model for controlling alphas, while creating alphas.

    Universalism of the church and of progressive whites, is incompatible with aristocratic egalitarianism.

    And liberty is *only* compatible with aristocratic egalitarianism.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-19 13:34:00 UTC

  • INSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN SOCIAL ORDER WE CALL

    INSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN SOCIAL ORDER WE CALL WESTERN CIVILIZATION (rough sketch)

    PROBLEM

    Faced with numerical inferiority, but capable of producing sufficient calories, how does a group successfully compete? (Whether for advancement in consumption or preservation of consumption)

    ANSWER

    Excellence, Meritocracy. Coordination, Adaptation, Speed, Technology, Concentration Of Resources. .

    STRATEGY

    I. Create a competitive organization capable of continuous improvement and which will remain competitive over the long term.

    II. Provide a means of enfranchisement by demonstrated ability to cooperate with, and to compete on behalf of, the organization.

    III. Prevent the concentration of the power to alter the egalitarian order for personal gain.

    IV. Prevent the concentration of the power to define property rights and allocate property as a means of altering the egalitarian strategy.

    Note: Human biological predisposition to constrain alphas. And this predisposition varies between genders, racial groups and classes.

    Build and encourage alphas. Constrain alphas through enfranchisement and egalitarian prohibition of power.

    TACTICS

    1) Provide a means for discouraging conflict and encouraging cooperation by providing a means for the resolution of conflict.

    Note: Independent judges under the common law.

    2) Define property and a portfolio of property rights and obligations as a means of facilitating cooperation and preventing conflict.

    Note: A constitution, oral or written, that enumerates rights, obligations and processes. And which applies equally to all enfranchised.

    3) Provide a means of imposing a monopoly on the definition of those property rights, thereby creating a market.

    Note: a competition between systems of property rights must result in the theft of either personal property, common physical property, common formal institutional property, or that form of common informal property called norms.

    4) Provide a means of concentrating capital for the production of commons for the purpose of improving the competitiveness of the market.

    Note: Governance is the concentration of capital in support of expanding the market, not lawmaking.

    5) Provide a means for preventing the privatization of the commons either directly or indirectly.

    Note: Prevent cheating, indirect involuntary transfer. Use Contractualism instead of legalism. Use contracts not laws.

    6) Provide for a means of distributing dividends to shareholders as a means of preventing involuntary transfer of shareholder value.

    Note: prevent cheating and encourage both membership and conformity by limiting dividends to the enfranchised only.

    Note: Property rights are earned by respecting them.

    =========

    Needs a lot of work. Good first sketch.

    One very interesting insight.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-18 19:20:00 UTC

  • “The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of

    “The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.” – Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 07:13:00 UTC

  • READING: THE EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT I’ve been trying to consume just about everythin

    READING: THE EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT

    I’ve been trying to consume just about everything produced by the European New Right that I can find. Starting with the obvious choice of Alain De Benoist, and this morning on The Fourth Political Theory. And, I’m frankly, kind of suprised at how weak it is. Not in it’s intention, but in its failure to really add anything new to our set of institutions that would bring about its desired social order. Or even, really, an understanding of WHY our early pre-christian (artistocratic egalitarian) ethics was superior both to christian and neo-liberal ethics.

    Why should this bother me?

    Because we propertarians have solved the problem of political ethics and institutions of cooperation. And we’ve rejected the ‘growth’ argument that underlies the western democratic socialist and progressive capitalist ethics.

    We did what no one else has done in history. And we are basically ignored. Why is that? Why is it that we’re ignored?

    It’s becaue of Rothbard’s failure to include opportunity costs, warranty, symmetry, and indirect voluntary transfer in his ethics.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-10 03:56:00 UTC

  • SILLY NEW YEARS TRADITION: ANNUAL FAIL VIDEO RELEASES What’s the difference betw

    SILLY NEW YEARS TRADITION: ANNUAL FAIL VIDEO RELEASES

    What’s the difference between Russian and American Fail videos for this year?

    1) Alcohol is required for stupid behavior in Russia. American men do not need alcohol to be stupid.

    2) Russians are less Likely to help someone in distress. Americans will always help someone. (It’s dangerous to help drunk people. It’s not dangerous to help stupid people. I think that’s the less on to be learned)

    3) Russians create more urban fails, and americans more suburban and rural fails. Although this might be an economic selection bias.

    4) American women are more willing to humiliate themselves intentionally, and russian women avoid it at all costs (at least when they’re sober)

    But either way, there are a lot of bored white people in both countries.

    And they’re adorable. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-02 14:33:00 UTC

  • DIVERSITY IS A “BAD” We have known for some time now that diversity produces neg

    DIVERSITY IS A “BAD”

    We have known for some time now that diversity produces negative consequences.

    Those consequences are most visible in the reluctance by individuals to contribute to the commons: taxes, redistribution, and even maintenance of common areas. And of course both the willingness and ability to enforce morals and norms.

    In the west we have lost the battle for the sacrifice that is necessary for the nuclear family. Our immigrants are accelerating that abandonment and returning maintaining their inbreeding, extended family traditions if paternalistic, and serial marriage if maternalistic. We have lost our anglo saxon rights to freedom along with our constitution. We have lost our obligation to charity and devotion to the commons in the form if voluntary organizations that provided both the moral impetative and institutional framework for our previous civil society. We have lost our right to juridical defense for all regulatory and much legislative law. We have lost the primacy of our common and natural laws. And we have lost our religion and mythology. As well as our unique western identity. In economic terms, we have lost most of the social capital that makes the high trust society possible.

    There is some debate that over the medium term the economic benefit of immigration may mask those negative consequences.

    But why does diversity create bads?

    Because diversity creates a competition of norms and signals. And humans stop paying for norms when their payments are stolen by those with competing norms and signals.

    What does that mean?

    Traditions and norms matter. They matter because they are prescriptions for an order, or portfolio of types of property. It is not so much that people will forget certain norms and the knowledge that they contain. But that they will refuse to pay for the commons that we call norms, if they find them either bad investments or more commonly A TAX THAT THEY PAY, but which OTHERS CHEAT AND THEREFORE ESCAPE PAYING.

    Norms are paid when they are observed. They bear a cost. Every single time. Morals bear a cost. A high one. Every time they are observed.

    We humans abhor cheating. And competing sets of norms, especially those that demand less discipline, are licenses to cheat and steal.

    Humans will not reward cheaters. In fact they will redouble their efforts to punish them. And in the case of norms, they will fail to pay for the commons. At least they will fail to pay when the value of signaling conformity drops.

    And this leads us to the other bit of research: that the purpose of progressive promotion of diversity is just signaling that is available cheaply with little effort.

    In other words: the desire for diversity is status seeking.

    So some of us signal by our production. Some of us by consumption. And liberals by giving away other people’s money.

    Which I find fascinating.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-30 17:18:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/roger-scruton-fake-culture/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-29 07:03:00 UTC

  • FAMILY HISTORY: AMERICA, ENGLAND, BUT IS IT NORMANDY, ENGLAND OR GERMANY? I’ve w

    FAMILY HISTORY: AMERICA, ENGLAND, BUT IS IT NORMANDY, ENGLAND OR GERMANY?

    I’ve written a bit about this before. But our small family came to the states in the 1630’s. But we know everyone’s name back to the 1400’s. The family historians have made claims that we’re Normans. But that’s entirely specious. And the argument they used to prove it only serves to disprove it. We know, I think, no more than 25 names of people who participated in the Norman invasion. And our family was from central England. So, I’m fairly sure that like most english people’s we’re largely germanic. Mostly celtic. Although, given their Puritanism, and their location, it’s just as likely that they were part of the wave of German immigrants who left for greater freedom in England, or even more likely part of the Danish gene pool that dominated that area. But until we have genetic samples from enough members of the family to create some semblance of a pattern – at least on the male side, we will have a hard time being sure.

    In the large, we have retained the protestant english behavior of small business, martial devotion, and did not substantially outbreed, at least in New England, until the second world war. Although we must keep in mind that the prices of land were driven up in new England in the 1700’s, partly because it was some of the best land on earth at the time, and many families moved to the ohio river valley to take advantage of the lower cost of land. And it is more likely that that wing of the family has retained its homogeneity. The southern wing of the family is fairly large but harder to isolate.

    Some day I’ll spend some time on this. Some day. Maybe….

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 06:40:00 UTC

  • STATES ARE NOT PEOPLES I’ve changed my identity. My country has left me. I’m not

    STATES ARE NOT PEOPLES

    I’ve changed my identity. My country has left me. I’m not an American. I’m an Englishman. A member of the English race. A race with both genetic and written history. I will be a member of that race no matter what state chooses to deprive me of my property, and by my property, my freedom. A modern passport is a slave-brand. It’s a title. It’s ownership of your body, actions and property. Its a claim on your production. If that is not slavery, then there is no other kind. As such, I need not stand and fight for political commands, or a constitution that has failed me and my people, nor for a state that has branded me a slave, relegated me to second class legal status as a white male, and intentionally demonized me, my race and our history. I will fight for my rights as an Englishman. The right of property. The right of the common law for the adjudication of differences over property. And therefore the right of freedom from arbitrary commands by an arbitrary state.

    Some Things Are Worth Repeating

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-23 06:21:00 UTC